


A Safe Place

by Feriku



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Awkward Jesper, Drinking, Flirting, Fluff, Hiding, M/M, Nervous Wylan, Pre-Crooked Kingdom, Sharing a Bed, Sharing a Room, Wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 11:00:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17445638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feriku/pseuds/Feriku
Summary: When men show up looking for Wylan in the middle of the night, he needs a safe place to sleep. Jesper isn't quite prepared for a nervous merchling knocking on his door.(Set vaguely during Six of Crows; I can't remember the timeline well enough to know if canon would allow for such a sequence of events.)





	A Safe Place

If the letters had any good effect at all, it was that they made Wylan more paranoid. In the Barrel, that was definitely a good thing. While he didn’t dwell on it often, it was always at the back of his mind that his father knew where he was.

So when he woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of his own name outside his tiny room, he immediately crept to the door to listen.

His heart pounded so hard he could barely hear. Let it be one of the others, come to find him for some last-minute preparations before the job. Demo work wasn’t his favorite thing, but it made him useful and he was good at it. If they needed him, he’d do his best.

Especially since technically his real role on the team was _hostage_ , and he’d be about the worst hostage the world had ever seen. If he couldn’t succeed at that, he wanted to at least do well at the rest.

“Wylan Hendriks? Sure, he has a room here.”

His stomach dropped. Someone was asking about him. It shouldn’t be one of the Dregs, then.

“Where is it?” another voice asked.

The voice… sounded familiar. Could it be…? Wylan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It was one of the men his father had hired to kill him. They’d caught up with him, undoubtedly on his father’s orders.

Not again. He couldn’t go through this again

Determined not to panic and even more determined not to die, Wylan hurried away from the door and climbed out the window.

#

Wylan found himself standing in front of Jesper’s door.

The sharpshooter had told him where to find him early on, ostensibly in case he needed any help with anything, although he’d said it with a wink and suggestive glance that made Wylan blush. Well, potential murderers lurking around his room definitely counted as needing help.

Although Jesper’s offer probably hadn’t included visits this late at night.

Wylan ignored his doubts and knocked. Then he knocked again, a little harder, paranoid that someone might have seen him leave the room and followed him.

The door opened after another minute. “Who—” Jesper blinked at him, then rubbed his eyes. “Merchling?”

Wylan tried not to sound as nervous as he felt. “Can I come in?”

Jesper stepped past him and looked up at the sky, as if he thought he’d overslept.

“I know it’s late,” Wylan said. “I… can’t stay at my place. I think someone’s after me.”

“Seriously?” Jesper yawned and rubbed a hand over his face. “Come on, merchling, doesn’t Kaz have people watching you?”

Yes, but while that dubious protection applied to normal threats from the Barrel, Wylan wasn’t so sure it applied to those sent by his father. Kaz probably assumed anyone his father sent would be there to drag him home, not strangle him. Wylan stared at Jesper and tried to think of a way to explain that without, well, _explaining._

Jesper blinked, looking fully awake at last. “Hey, are you all right?”

“I’m running around in the middle of the night because someone wants to murder me. Does that sound like I’m _all right_?”

“Sounds like a normal day in Ketterdam to me,” Jesper said with a grin. He stepped back to let Wylan in.

Wylan hurried past him, grateful he no longer had to worry about potential murderers.

Just one flirtatious sharpshooter.

Jesper stepped right up behind him and murmured, “I don’t have a lot of space, but I’m sure I can make you comfortable.”

Wylan blushed. How did he manage to make _everything_ sound like a proposition?

 “Tell me, merchling, what exactly did you have in mind when you came to my room in the middle of the night, hmm?”

He didn’t have a good answer. Going to Jesper for help felt right at the time, but… Wylan was suddenly uncomfortably aware that he barely knew Jesper and wasn’t entirely sure how safe he was with him, and even more aware that he would probably do whatever Jesper asked if the alternative was going back to his room to be murdered.

Wylan dared to look at the other boy. But reading him was nearly impossible. He couldn’t be sure if the sharpshooter liked him or hated him. Was Jesper’s occasional condescension just teasing, or did he consider Wylan a problem?

“Okay, seriously,” Jesper said. “Are we just going to stand here and stare at each other all night?”

Wylan glanced around the room. He tried not to look at the bed. If he was lucky, Jesper would let him sleep on the floor and then they’d never talk about this night ever again. “I’m sorry.”

“You sure know how to make an evening uncomfortable, merchling.”

Right. That answered his question. Jesper saw him as a problem. And that problem had just interrupted his evening.

Wylan took a deep breath and attempted to look composed and calm, then made a break for the door. Maybe he could find someone else willing to protect him from murderers. Why in the world had he gone to _Jesper_ , anyway?

“Wait, what—” Jesper stepped into his path to block his escape. “What is the matter with you?”

A question Wylan had heard far too many times.

“Lots of things,” he snapped. “I know that perfectly well without _you_ telling me too.”

Jesper stared at him for a moment and then shook his head. “You know what? I think you need a drink.” He started toward the other side of his room, but then paused and glanced back over his shoulder. “Wait. You probably don’t drink, do you? Proper merchling and all that.”

Wylan had never had a drop of alcohol in his life, and the prospect of drinking with Jesper under these circumstances sounded like a terrible idea… but even as he opened his mouth to say as much, he hesitated.

He didn’t want to fit whatever stupid image of him Jesper had built up in his mind. The other boy would probably laugh if he knew he never drank. It was just one more thing to make Wylan seem less capable, less mature than the rest of them. Someone Jesper wouldn’t care to get to know any better.

Besides, drinking alone with a handsome sharpshooter in the Barrel was the sort of behavior Wylan’s father would absolutely condemn. That alone made it worth doing.

“I’d love a drink,” Wylan said. At Jesper’s raised eyebrows, he added, “I _have_ had alcohol before, you know.”

The other boy shrugged and bent to lift up a loose floorboard, from beneath which he pulled out a small bottle. “Got ahold of some wine a while back. I’ve been saving this for a special occasion, but—”

“Ah!” Wylan held up his hands. “If it’s for a special occasion, you don’t have to waste it on me.”

“Waste?” Jesper smirked. “Hard to think of an occasion more special than a merchling spending the night with me. Most men only dream of such an honor.”

Was that mockery or flirting?

And wait, spending the night? Was Wylan spending the night? Well, he’d sort of hoped to since he had nowhere else to go, but Jesper seemed to have accepted it pretty easily. Unless he meant… something else.

Wylan’s nerves were getting worse by the minute. That drink couldn’t come fast enough.

“Fancy wine for the rich merchling,” Jesper said with a grin. He poured some wine into a cup and held it out to Wylan, then poured another cup for himself. He left the bottle out on the table and sat down on the bed.

There really wasn’t a lot of room. Wylan stood awkwardly near him.

“To a successful job,” Jesper said.

“Yeah.”

They each took a drink of their wine. Wylan sipped his cautiously, in case it made him choke, but it wasn’t half bad. It was even sort of sweet.

“Well?” Jesper asked.

“What?”

“How does it compare to your expensive mercher wines?”

Even though he’d never had any, the thought of drinking anything back in his father’s house made Wylan’s stomach turn. “This is much better.”

Jesper laughed. “Really?”

“Really.” Wylan sat down on the narrow bed alongside him, almost in defiance of his fears and uncertainties and everything he wasn’t supposed to do, and took another drink of wine.

#

The wine was gone, and they were sitting very close. Wylan couldn’t remember which of them had closed the gap between them as they finished the bottle together, but the sharpshooter’s warm body pressed against his didn’t feel as bad as he expected. In fact, it felt very, very good and he wasn’t entirely sure why he hadn’t sat this close in the first place.

“Feeling better?” Jesper asked.

“Mmm.”

“Well, good,” Jesper said after a long pause. “Then I’d like to get back to what I was doing before you attempted to break down my door, namely _sleeping._ ”

Sleeping? Wylan looked at him, curious. Of course, when he’d answered the door, he’d seemed like he’d just woken up, but… “You sleep with clothes on?”

Jesper grinned and waved a hand at himself. “I know I’m so radiant you can hardly control yourself, but try to see past the beauty. These aren’t exactly out-and-about clothes.”

“No,” Wylan said, trying to work through the haze in his thoughts to figure out what point he was trying to make, “you just seem like the sort of person who would sleep naked.”

Wait, no, that wasn’t what he wanted to say.

Jesper’s grin broadened. “Been thinking about that a lot, merchling?”

Wylan quickly shook his head. “I just always pictured it that way.”

_No_ that was even worse!

Wylan’s face felt like it had caught on fire. Perhaps there was still time to run outside and get himself killed, which would at least save him the embarrassment of trying to explain why he just implied he’d imagined Jesper naked, which was definitely _not_ something he’d ever done.

Definitely not.

“That’s not what I meant,” Wylan said. “That’s not what I meant. Um. That’s not what I meant.”

He had a good explanation somewhere, if he could just focus long enough to find it.

“Merchling,” Jesper said, his tone amused, “have you _really_ had alcohol before?”

“Um.” Wylan glanced around for help and then flopped onto Jesper’s pillow, the only convenient way to hide his face. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Nothing.” Jesper pulled the blanket up to cover him. “Just get some sleep.”

Wylan would have protested if he didn’t already feel like he was about to collapse.

After a moment, the sharpshooter joined him under the blanket. With the bed as narrow as it was, there wasn’t a lot of space. Their shoulders brushed, and the light contact provided an oddly comforting warmth. Wylan stayed tense for a moment, but Jesper made no attempt to touch him further.

And as Wylan drifted away into sleep, he at last remembered why Jesper was the one he’d gone to. Because despite all the uncertainty and teasing, he really did feel safe when Jesper was around.


End file.
